It is a pleasure to read, think about, and respond to the three insightful and knowledgeable critiques of Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures that have appeared in this Liberty Law Forum. These are also fair-minded critiques, since they all give Hamilton due credit for his many virtues, even as they take him to task for his errors or omissions.
Hans Eicholz finds fault with Hamilton for not being able to leave the free market alone. Eicholz warns of the dangers of government intervention in the economy, and reminds us that the market is a much better mediator of the complex information…

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Operating a specific enterprise, whatever its aim or product, requires focusing on measurable quantities of inputs and their measurable effects on outputs. Qualitative factors may enter into that equation, but only as they are necessary to the successful attainment of the specific object in question. That is the mindset of the manager of an “enterprise…

Carson Holloway’s Liberty Forum essay provides an opportunity to discuss an important historical document with current debates about the American economy in mind.
The chief issues that Alexander Hamilton raises in his 1791 Report on Manufactures are the role of manufacturing in the economy and government’s role in encouraging it. It should be remembered that the…

The great insight of Alexander Hamilton is that all serious nations take serious measures on behalf of their own security and prosperity. This is what good governments do. There is a clarity here that is absent from our current partisan debates, if only because Hamilton unapologetically offers good government as a foundation for republican government.…

Thanks to Broadway, Alexander Hamilton is famous once again. One might wonder whether his unexpected stage stardom would lead at least some Americans to turn to his most important state paper, the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, which contributed so much to the Hamiltonian profile as one of the preeminent Founders of the United States. Maybe not too many did—but solid substantive reasons call us, especially now, to a reconsideration of this greatest state paper of our greatest Secretary of the Treasury.
Presented to the Congress on December 5, 1791, the Report on Manufactures, as it is more commonly known,…

Responses

Operating a specific enterprise, whatever its aim or product, requires focusing on measurable quantities of inputs and their measurable effects on outputs. Qualitative factors may enter into that equation, but only as they are necessary to the successful attainment of the specific object in question. That is the mindset of the manager of an “enterprise…

Carson Holloway’s Liberty Forum essay provides an opportunity to discuss an important historical document with current debates about the American economy in mind.
The chief issues that Alexander Hamilton raises in his 1791 Report on Manufactures are the role of manufacturing in the economy and government’s role in encouraging it. It should be remembered that the…

The great insight of Alexander Hamilton is that all serious nations take serious measures on behalf of their own security and prosperity. This is what good governments do. There is a clarity here that is absent from our current partisan debates, if only because Hamilton unapologetically offers good government as a foundation for republican government.…

It is a pleasure to read, think about, and respond to the three insightful and knowledgeable critiques of Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures that have appeared in this Liberty Law Forum. These are also fair-minded critiques, since they all give Hamilton due credit for his many virtues, even as they take him to task for…

Judicial activism always undermines the rule of law. Rarely, however, does it also endanger national security. Yet the federal judges who have blocked President Trump’s executive orders on immigration have done just that.

The lawlessness of the courts in question has been exposed by a group of five dissenting judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. As these judges so ably observe, the federal district courts that ruled against the President’s policy simply ignored binding precedents—of both the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court—recognizing the legal authority of the President to act as he did. Moreover, these judges achieved their aim by deploying an utterly novel application of the First Amendment, holding that an executive order that does not even mention religion somehow violates the Establishment Clause.

Americans are united in professing respect for the Constitution, but they are deeply divided over what it actually means and how it ought to be interpreted. These disagreements have roiled our public life for decades. Everybody who follows politics knows about the clashes between the liberal proponents of judicial activism and the conservative defenders of judicial deference. These arguments go on and on, with neither side succeeding in persuading the other of the superior merits of its theory. Faced with this ongoing deadlock, we wonder if there is any way to achieve unity on the meaning of the Constitution.

by James StonerWe are better off reviving natural rights as a useful explanation for some of our constitutional virtues, but to counteract the crisis of modernity we need to explore other explanations of our Constitution.

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